Maureen Colquhoun - 1st Lesbian MP

.Maureen Colquhoun - Britain's first openly LGBTQ+ MP - HiHu > .

Maureen Morfydd Colquhoun (née Smith, 12 August 1928 – 2 February 2021) was a British economist and Labour politician. She was Britain's first openly lesbian member of Parliament (MP).

Colquhoun was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Northampton North at the February 1974 general election, and identified with the Tribune Group, and served as the group's treasurer.  Arguing in favour of creche facilities for female delegates at the following year's Labour conference, she said in October 1975: 

"It is outrageous that we have to ask for this. The Labour Party pays mere lip service to International Women's Day. ... Young women are deterred from coming because there is no provision for their babies. Those who do are not even allowed to bring their toddlers into the gallery."

In 1975 she introduced the Balance of Sexes Bill with the objective to require men and women on public bodies in equal numbers. She had identified 4500 jobs appointed by Ministers, and 174 public bodies that were almost entirely male. In her speech to introduce the second reading of the Bill, she commended changes that had been made to the nominations process for the 'central list' from which candidates for government bodies could be selected, although she doubted that it was sufficiently broad to encourage applications from all areas of society. The Bill did not become law.

In 1976, Colquhoun was among nine Labour MPs advocating in a letter to The Times an "alternative policy" on Northern Ireland, including the removal of British troops from the country. She drew a negative response from members of her constituency party, in an area with a significant non-white population, for appearing to defend Enoch Powell in January 1977. 

"I am rapidly concluding that Mr Powell, whom I had always believed to be a racialist before I went into the House of Commons, is not one". 

She thought that sometimes it was wrong for members of her party to stop listening to what he was saying, and that the "real bogeymen are in the Labour Party" who do not improve the conditions for people in the multi-racial inner-cities. In February 1977, she expressed regret for her comments to her constituency party, withdrew any suggestion she supported Powell's opinions, and affirmed her support for a multi-racial society.

In 1979, she introduced the Protection of Prostitutes Bill into the House of Commons, turning up with 50 prostitutes in order to campaign for the decriminalisation of prostitution.

Colquhoun was Britain's first openly lesbian MP. In 1973, as a married mother of three teenage children, she left her husband of 25 years, Sunday Times journalist Keith Colquhoun, for the publisher of Sappho magazine, Babs (Barbara) Todd.

Colquhoun was deselected due to her sexuality and her feminist views; in late September 1977, members of her constituency party's General Management Committee voted by 23 votes to 18, with one abstention, to deselect her, citing her "obsession with trivialities such as women's rights". The local party chairman Norman Ashby said at the time: 

"She was elected as a working wife and mother ... this business has blackened her image irredeemably". 

"My sexuality has nothing whatever to do with my ability to do my job as an MP", Colquhoun insisted in an article for Gay News in October 1977.

The vote by her constituency party was overruled in January 1978, as supporters of Colquhoun appealed to the National Executive Committee, who agreed that Colquhoun had been unfairly dismissed owing to her sexual orientation. Colquhoun wanted to put the past behind her and work with her local party, but the Vice-Chair of the General Management Committee said he thought that was impossible as many members were unwilling to work for Colquhorn's re-election, the prospects for which he thought were not promising. At the 1979 general election, she lost her seat to the Conservative Antony Marlow on an 8% swing.

She divorced her husband in 1980. Babs Todd was still her partner at Todd's death on 13 February 2020. Colquhoun died on 2 February 2021 at the age of 92.

1893-11-28 NZ Women Vote

.28th November 1893: New Zealand women vote for the first time - HiPo > .

Late 19th Century History (1875-1899) - HiPo >> .

The issue of women’s suffrage in New Zealand began to gain momentum in the second half of the 19th century. Like in other countries, women in New Zealand had been excluded from political life. Drawing strength from the broader American and northern European movements for women’s rights, some of New Zealand’s leading suffrage campaigners argued that equal rights for women were necessary for the moral improvement of society.

The New Zealand branch of the Women's Christian Temperance Union was a driving force behind the movement, which was energised by campaigners such as Kate Sheppard and Mary Ann Müller. By the start of 1893 they had secured widespread support for women’s suffrage, as shown through the thousands of names that appeared on petitions.

After previous attempts to pass bills to give women the right to vote had failed to make it through Parliament, the 1893 Women's Suffrage Petition led to a new Electoral Bill that would grant suffrage to women of all races easily passing through the Lower House.

Although the Upper House was divided on the issue, a late switch by two councillors who had originally opposed the bill led to it passing by 20 votes to 18 on 8 September 1893. Lord Glasgow signed it into law 11 days later, enabling women to vote in the general election. The European part of the election took place on 28 November and saw 65% of all eligible New Zealand women turn out to vote.

Exactly 26 years later, on 28 November 1919, Lady Astor became the first elected British female MP to take her seat in the British House of Commons.

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Women in the Second World War took on many different roles during the War, including as combatants and workers on the home front. The Second World War involved global conflict on an unprecedented scale; the absolute urgency of mobilizing the entire population made the expansion of the role of women inevitable, although the particular roles varied from country to country. Millions of women of various ages died as a result of the war.

In Britain, women were essential to the war effort. The contribution by civilian men and women to the British war effort was acknowledged with the use of the words "home front" to describe the battles that were being fought on a domestic level with rationing, recycling, and war work, such as in munitions factories and farms and men were thus released into the military. Women were also recruited to work on the canals, transporting coal and munitions by barge across the UK via the inland waterways. These became known as the "Idle Women", initially an insult derived from the initials IW, standing for Inland Waterways, which they wore on their badges, but the term was soon adopted by the women themselves. Many women served with the Women's Auxiliary Fire Service, the Women's Auxiliary Police Corps and in the Air Raid Precautions (later Civil Defence) services. Others did voluntary welfare work with Women's Voluntary Services and the Salvation Army.

Britain underwent a labour shortage where an estimated 1.5 million people were needed for the armed forces, and an additional 775,000 for munitions and other services in 1942. It was during this "labour famine" that propaganda aimed to induce people to join the labour force and do their bit in the war. Women were the target audience in the various forms of propaganda because they were paid substantially less than men. It was of no concern whether women were filling the same jobs that men previously held. Even if women were replacing jobs with the same skill level as a man, they were still paid significantly less due to their gender [Expressed differently, women were paid less because of male prejudice.]. In the engineering industry alone, the number of skilled and semi-skilled female workers increased from 75 per cent to 85 per cent from 1940–1942. According to Gazeley, even though women were paid less than men, it is clear that women engaging in war work and taking on jobs preserved by men reduced industrial segregation.

When Britain went to war, as before in World War I, previously forbidden job opportunities opened up for women. Women were called into the factories to create the weapons that were used on the battlefield. Women took on the responsibility of managing the home and became the heroines of the home front. According to Carruthers, this industrial employment of women significantly raised women's self-esteem as it allowed them to carry out their full potential and do their part in the war. During the war, women's normative roles of "house wife" transformed into a patriotic duty. As Carruthers put it, the housewife has become a heroine in the defeat of Hitler.

The roles of women shifting from domestic to masculine and dangerous jobs in the workforce made for important changes in workplace structure and society. During the Second World War, society had specific ideals for the jobs in which both women and men participated. When women began to enter into the masculine workforce and munitions industries previously dominated by men, women's segregation began to diminish. Increasing numbers of women were forced into industry jobs between 1940–1943. As surveyed by the Ministry of Labour, the percentage of women in industrial jobs went from 19.75 per cent to 27 per cent from 1938–1945. It was very difficult for women to spend their days in factories, and then come home to their domestic chores and care-giving, and as a result, many women were unable to hold their jobs in the workplace.

Women were "drafted" in the sense that they were conscripted into war work by the Ministry of Labour, including non-combat jobs in the military, such as the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS or "Wrens"), the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF or "Waffs") and the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). Auxiliary services such as the Air Transport Auxiliary also recruited women. In the early stages of the war such services relied exclusively on volunteers, however by 1941 conscription was extended to women for the first time in British history and around 600,000 women were recruited into these three organizations. In these organizations women performed a wide range of jobs in support of the Army, Royal Air Force (RAF) and Royal Navy both overseas and at home. These jobs ranged from traditionally feminine roles like cook, clerk and telephonist to more traditionally masculine duties like mechanic, armourer, searchlight and anti-aircraft instrument operator. British women were not drafted into combat units, but could volunteer for combat duty in anti-aircraft units, which shot down German planes and V-1 missiles. Civilian women joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which used them in high-danger roles as secret agents and underground radio operators in Nazi occupied Europe.